Cel Damage is a cartoony take on vehicular combat games like Twisted Metal. The story focuses on six cartoon characters from a fictional cartoon show called "Cel Damage". The characters annihilate each other to the delight of TV audiences and, since they are cartoons, instantly regenerate. The player battles through thirteen different levels and three game modes. Weaponry for Cel Damage includes cartoon staples like vacuum nozzles and portable holes, mundane weaponry like chainsaws and baseball bats, and items like freeze rays, giant springs, and portable nuclear devices.

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Cel Damage is a vehicle shooter in which players compete against one another using weapons to either gain smack points or stop other opponents from achieving their goal, depending on the game mode. Weapons include black holes, boxing gloves, grenades, chainsaws,[2] baseball bats, chain guns, axes, and freeze rays.[3] The three game modes are Smack Attack, in which players attack other players and/or computer players to gain a certain number of points first; Gate Relay, in which players race to checkpoints; and Flag Rally, in which players race to collect flags. Smack Attack is the only mode not initially locked (Except In PS2 Version). Additional characters and areas are also unlockable in the game.[2]

Cel Damage features ten characters, six automatically given at the beginning of the game and four unlockable "guest star" characters.[4]

Violet is a teen demon girl from Asia. She has a taste for fast living and outrageous mischief. She is 100% attitude and 110% delivery! Her personal weapon is a mortar. She drives a gothic jeep.

Sinder

Sinder's behavior is so chaotic, that he got himself thrown out of hell itself for not following the Boss's orders. The main reason he joined Cel Damage is because he gets pleasure out of destruction. His personal weapon is a wood chipper. He drives a six wheeled vehicle.

B.T. Bruno

Bruno is a former construction worker. He drives a bulldozer and cannot get enough of smashing other cars to pieces with his weapon; a giant sledgehammer.

Fowl Mouth

A gangster duck straight out of a 1930's B-movie. He comes with a no-nonsense attitude and a Tommy gun. He drives an old fashioned car.

Dominique Trix

A cruel, heartless toon with nerves of steel. Dominique is a high-class toon who revels in the exquisite torment delivered by her dynamite crossbow. She sees the Cel Damage experience as an enjoyable recreation. She drives a fancy pink vehicle.

Flemming

The 'Nerd of Nerds'. Flemming has skill when it comes to inventing powerful vehicles and weapons such as his hovercraft and laser cannons.

In the game, Cel Damage is a popular animated demolition derby series that airs weekly on the fictional network "'Toon T.V."[5] The characters in Cel Damage are a select few of cartoon characters who battle every week to achieve fame and glory.[5] The characters use their own vehicles[6] and battle using a variety of deadly weapons.[7] Because the characters in Cel Damage are cartoons, they cannot be killed and can continuously come back to fight again.[5]

Because of its focus on cartoons, Cel Damage was created to look like a cartoon. The Cel Damage graphics engine uses a rendering technique called cel-shading to produce this cartoon-like appearance.[8] Furthermore, the physics engine in Cel Damage is unique. Rather than aiming to simulate realistic real-world physics, it emulates complex cartoon physics; the physics engine calculates the relevant parts of physical interaction as they would in reality, and then distorts the physical laws to produce a cartoon-like interaction.[9] This can be seen, for example, when a car turns and the entire shape of the car deforms and flexes into the turning direction. Cars and game objects can realistically be sliced into pieces, flattened, frozen, shattered, shredded, impaled, lit on fire (and subsequently burn to a crisp and fall into ashes), and more.[9] Editor of Game Developer Magazine Chris Hecker, described Cel Damage's cartoon-style graphics as "state-of-the-art for computer-game physics".[9]

Cel Damage was released as Cel Damage: Overdrive, a Europe-only title for the PlayStation 2. Play It released the game on December 12, 2003. [10]

Cel Damage was generally praised for its cartoon graphics, but received mixed reviews from critics. GameSpot called the game’s visuals "impressive," and that the player "can easily think that [he or she is] playing a real-time cartoon".[3] However, GameSpot said that some weapons in the game were far more useful than others, making the game a repetitive race to get the best weapon.[3] IGN said the cel shading in Cel Damage "was one of the best examples of the effect on the market," but that the game play is too difficult due to both the computer players and the small arenas.[16] GameSpy praised Cel Damage for its characters and maintaining its cartoon feel, but found that the game play was too short.[22]